Sovereign Hawks
by PhaerynTao
Summary: Rabbit Proof Fence. Molly Craig's thoughts as she, Gracie, and Daisy ride the train to Moore River.


I had hunted animals all my life. Hunted them, ate them, respected them for their sacrifice for my sustenance. Never had I been treated like one, at least not so overtly. Outside the barred windows of the train, the trees passed me by like an old movie reel I had seen when I was very young. They seemed devoid of color, and devoid of souls, not like they were like when I lived in the woods, where everything, no matter if it was rich and green or dead and brown, had a great throbbing spirit. This place had perished long ago. The three of us, me, Gracie, and Daisy sat together like lambs for slaughter, even though death wasn't imminent. It didn't feel like they were going to kill us, though I would have liked the urgency to run through my veins. Perhaps if they were going to send us to our deaths, I would have felt enough passion to help us escape, but the only thing I felt was a great sadness. We had stopped our cries hours ago, but I still heard those of my mother's and my grandmother's, their wails rising to the skies like smoke caked in misery. It was a thing of our people; each sound we made was reminiscent of the wild. When we laughed, we sounded like the savage roaming dingos, and when we cried, we sounded like the falcon whose eggs had been crushed by a boulder.

We were my mother's eggs, and this train was a boulder. And although I needed to stay strong for my cousin and younger sister, I felt like I was already crushed, my yolk of a soul seeping out all over my skin. I breathed in deeply, and immediately regretted it, as the stench of captivity filled my lungs at last. I was trapped. They had taken me from my home and put me in a cage. The metal on the bottoms of my feet were steeled and horribly cold, and I longed to feel the searing hot dirt against them once more. Gracie didn't sit as close to me as she did when she was younger; my cousin was growing up, wanted to be more independent, something I didn't object to. I went through the same thing when I was younger, and so I let her take her time to figure out her woman parts. But we were in this cage like three hens roosting in a coop, and I wished she would sit closer to me. Perhaps not because she needed comfort, but because I did. I would never admit it, being the oldest and all, but I was frightened. The sadness, the anger, the sickening twisting feeling in my rabid gut made me want to make the sound of the broken hearted hawk again.

My eyes drooped. Daisy's eyes drooped too. Gracie had fallen asleep not too long ago. They were tired, exhausted. But I wasn't. My eyes didn't close because of fatigue, no. I thought that maybe if I didn't have to look at the soulless metal waste before me, my heart wouldn't hurt so badly. It's this indescribable feeling, you know. I always asked the man at the Jigalong department store what certain english words meant, and loss was one of them. He explained that it was like someone taking a knife and carving your heart until it was a piece of coal. I never really understood what he meant until the constable threw me and my siblings into the automobile, driving away to the erratic beat of my mother and grandmother hitting the windows with their hands, palms flat against the glass, again and again screaming for them to give their kids back. I understand what loss is, now, very well in fact.

And anger. And hate. Words that had no meaning at one point in my life, now described my entire existence.

Something clanged outside of our cage, and at first I thought it was the tracks beneath our car, but it was too close and too loud. I opened one of my eyes, then two, at the sight of a white man pouring himself some hot water for tea. At first he didn't even notice us, but I stared at him the whole time. It was the first time a rush of loathing sped through my head at the sight of someone's skin color. Something about that lack of pigment made me want to break free, hurt, kill. He glanced at me quickly, and then turned to me entirely. I decided not to blink as he finally made eye contact. His were squinted, very wrinkly, pale, milky, perhaps even dead. I stared at him with an emotionless glaze. Perhaps he would realize what he had helped do to us, feel guilty, and take us back to Jigalong. But I was right. He was dead inside, because he turned away from us, sipping his steaming insipid drink.

A tiny iota of vigor pulsed through my brain, much like lightning and thunder on the flat unforgiving terrain of the outback. Daisy's snoring was in my ear. Gracie was up again, staring listlessly into the ether, probably wondering what I was thinking. My arm that was around Daisy's shoulder exclusively stretched itself, setting the palm on Gracie's shoulder as well. She turned to look at me, and in our native tongue, she spoke in a whisper, to which the man's eyebrows knitted together like a poorly stitched doll's.

"I miss auntie." Gracie said.

I could feel Daisy's eyes flicker open. Felt the soft flutter of eyelashes on my other arm. She was listening now.

"We all do." I replied. _We'll get back, _I wanted to say. But I still needed to collect myself again before I spoke my mind.

"We'll never see them again." Said Gracie. Hopeless, hopeless Gracie.

I pinched her shoulder, something I've always done when I was annoyed by something she said. Daisy was completely awake. Her head rose and she stared up at me. She was invigorated, somehow. Perhaps it was because she saw the look on my face. A look of pure fiery instinct, something that no man can control within himself, least of all in someone else. My dark eyes flickered fiercely. In my mind I could see the faces of my people, my mother most of all and how she looked when we were taken away. I was not going to be a white girl, no matter how many times they beat me into submission. The man who poured tea earlier was affronted by my expression. He saw my will, my unbreakable will. I'll never figure out why I didn't give up like everyone else in my position, all I know is that I didn't. There's nothing easier than using the white man's fear against him. He became so uncomfortable, he left us to go to the other car, and we were in a binding wintry solitude.

"These people don't know anything." I said unabashedly, now that I was alone with them again.

I held Daisy close to me. She understood what was going through her sister's mind, I could tell. She may not say much, and may be kind of impressionable, but she looks up to me. Her tiny fist gripped my shirt made from a burlap sack.

"You gonna take us home, Molly?" Daisy asked me.

I didn't answer right away. I looked outside the train windows again, and could have sworn I saw a bird of prey, soaring above it all, free, its home the entire world. Its eggs were fine, I could tell.

I nodded slightly.


End file.
